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Notes from Seattle Interactive: Microsoft and the Multi-Device User

Hot trends in Web and marketing were all on display this week at Seattle Interactive, a large regional show with 190 speakers and an audience largely comprised of Northwest agencies, startups and technologists.

The change in media was brilliantly illustrated by a single question posed by a speaker. “How many of you responded to a Nielsen diary entry since this session started? (no hands raised) And how many of you have updated your social media status or posted?”(many hands).

Big data, social media, responsive web sites and all things mobile were among the key topics at the event. And so, clearly, was the hoped for revival of Microsoft, which is sharply pivoting with the launch of Windows 8 to a multi-device outlook.

The mixed reviews that have greeted Windows 8 suggest its strategy may have trouble catching on. There are deeper issues, too. Last week, at OMMA M Commerce in LA, fewer than four people in an audience of 80+ raised their hands when agencies and developers were asked if they were planning to support Windows 8. Apple iOS and Android rule the nest, for now.

But the turf at Seattle Interactive is naturally friendly to Microsoft. At least 5 percent of the phones were Windows phones (OK, not many). But you could see that the company’s dramatic gyrations energizing much of the tech community.

One of Microsoft’s big initiatives is to be the first of the major Website leaders to engage the “responsive Web” to personalize solutions and conquer “message overload” and “channel attribution.”

Those are “old world problems, “ noted Microsoft General Manager Abe Thomas, during a conference keynote . The “new world” problems, he says, are “social noise.” A leader will develop strategies for the new multi- device consumer, “who wants a specific device in front of them at different times.”

The challenge is the tremendous fragmentation among the operating systems, and now, the devices as well. Sixty percent of iPad owners have an Android device, not an iPhone, Blackberry or Windows phone, he notes. Almost everyone has a Windows PC. “Sooner or later, you will say: Microsoft, Apple, Google – Get it together.”

Microsoft isn’t necessarily working to work inter-operably, but it is “living and breathing the customer journey,” becoming more transparent, and “knowing and respecting the competition,” he says.